It's different out west

I guess at the heart of it, I have something of a confidence problem.

I think one of the reasons I couldn't stay in that job, is that people looked down on me -- sub-consciously or otherwise. In this part of the country, there's little you can do to cut through the stigmas and preconceived notions people see.

I was the service manager of a mostly-upscale motorcycle dealership. I got into through previous dealings with the shop. I became a good customer, befriended almost everyone there and before I knew it, I had a new place to work when my six year mode of employ came to an end.

It always felt like a summer job to me; one that I couldn't really take seriously, despite the fact that I was actually making semi-serious money. In the end, it felt like a dead end. That, and you had to work every Saturday, with no chance of taking vacation during the summer. Company rules.

I think people were surprised after they spoke with me for a few minutes. It's not to prop myself up or say that I'm the smartest person to ever work in the motorcycle industry -- far from it. But I think people got more than they bargained for after some chat. And, of course, it cut both ways.

I tried like hell to move to Portland, Oregon to work at the greatest motorcycle dealership I've seen. The reasons I think that are numerous. I've been through the doors of hundreds of dealerships, and this one is head and shoulders above any of the others. Maybe it's just a byproduct, or pure chance. But my two trips out there to try to nail down the details had me believe that Portland is the greatest North American city I've ever visited. But there's something else.

On my first night out there, I went to dinner with the general manager of the dealership -- and everyone else. That's how they roll. They're really like a big family. And, a few customers heard that we were all going out, so they tagged along.

At first, I would've told you that at least two of the customers were highly-placed corporate executives with expensive post-graduate degrees in economics or some other complex discipline. One of them worked behind the counter at GameStop, the other a salesman at a car dealership.

The year before that, a friend of mine flew me out to San Francisco to see the inaugural USGP at Mazda Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California. It was a truly splendid time, made even more so by some of the people I met out there. The sashimi at the transvestite show bar was also some of the best I've ever had.

But it was the same thing. The people you would take for high-level executives of whatever industry were real, working folks. But different. More like myself, perhaps. It didn't matter what they did for a living. They're just incredibly nice, interesting people who don't have confidence issues, and don't feel the need to tell you everything they think they know so they can convince themselves that they have social worth.

It's nice to meet people who are interested in *you*. Not where you work, or what you drive or whom you know. Nothing else really matters. No pretense, no showmanship, no onanism. Real. People.

You don't get that here in the "Heart of It All."

Smoking v1.2

Perhaps I'm a hypocrite.


As I type this, I'm enjoying a hand-made cigar. It is, well, enjoyable.

I still think it's different from cigarettes. I can see all of what I'm smoking.

There's no fiberglass, no amonium nitrate, nothing for an opportunistic tobacco company to hook me for life. If I did get hooked, I could probably walk down to The Sponge Docks and complain to the man who sold it to me.

I think what really pours sand down my shorts about smokers is the utter disregard for common courtesy -- something which my mother has always said I lack. But think of it for a moment. Almost every smoker I know feels that a smoke break is owed to him. He also has no problem throwing his burning refuse on the ground and dismissing it as biodegradable -- something which will naturally break down into base organic material. It isn't. Even if it were, I could easily make the argument that human feces is certainly biodegradable, but it would never occur to me that I could defecate on his front lawn or driveway or any old parking lot.

Worst of all, the smoker has no regard for my earthly to breathe clean air. In fact, he's put-off, arsed that I may ask him to not smoke near me or that he and his fellow smoking friends not congregate in front of every doorway I must walk through upon entering a public building.

So by now, I'm nearly done with this cigar, sitting on a dock at nearly one in the morning, away from just about any living soul.

I've even collected the ashes that fell. But I know that somehow, I'm still a hypocrite

Why?

You could tell that she wasn't a smoker.

From the way she held the cigarette, to her difficulty in holding the smoke in her mouth, let alone her lungs -- she was new to this.

She got out of the back of a late '90's Ford Expedition, where someone was still back there with a rear-facing baby seat. So I guess I should be somewhat grateful that she elected to get out and 'smoke', rather than subject the one with the least choice of anyone in the vehicle.

It was hard to size up this group. A white Expedition with a Confederate Flag where the front license plate would go on a vehicle in a state that requires it. Apparently, Florida and Georgia
do not. Five of them filed out of the large SUV. Four of them went to the restroom, the fifth stood outside to 'smoke.' Two of the young men were wearing muscle shirts. The three young women were all wearing belly shirts, had navel piercings, and appeared to be hanging all over the two young men I could see. I couldn't tell the gender of the person who stayed with the baby.

When two police cars screamed by with lights and sirens blazing, the two young men gestured and shouted in the direction of the police cars. One of them, a redhead, grabbed his crotch and pointed with two fingers in a decidedly 'urban' fashion, if you will, at the cars. I couldn't hear him, but all I could make out from reading his lips was, "Come get some of this, bitch!" Maybe he was just happy that they weren't after him for a change.

While all this was going on, the two other young women (not the one choking and turning green from what looked to be maybe her fifth or sixth Marlboro Red) were sharing a single, lit cigarette. One of the men snatched it from her. He took a drag. The other young man took it from the redheaded young man and took a drag -- but the redhead never took his fingers off it. It was a strange visual dynamic that seemed to transcend any necessary description of the matter.

The first girl lit another cigarette and tried desperately to get all the moves down, the posture, the fidgeting with the cigarette for the sake of looking busy and looking like she'd done it before.

Cigarettes are an acquired taste, I guess. I don't know, I never smoked. It never appealed to me. I've tried cigarettes, certainly. But I could never understand the appeal. I actually do like the taste of a quality, handmade cigar. But I think that's different, it's a dynamic. If I smoke one cigar a year, it's a heavy year. If I had access to the kind of Cuban cigar I smoked in Mexico last year, I might smoke them all the time. It was strangely... Wonderful.

No one ever picks up her first cigarette and enjoys it -- at least the physical attributes. The taste, the burning sensation in her nose, throat and sinuses; the smell.

So, why? Why bother?

I fear that it's for the least compelling reason of all.

Everyone else is doing it.

Off to Fla

We're off to Florida tomorrow. I'll be happy to get out from under this oppressive cold malaise.

So I don't have much, other than this:

It's silly to try to imagine what it's like inside someone else's head. But I can actually give you an idea of what it's like inside mine, courtesy of Mr. David Firth. The first time I saw this, I was so frightened, I couldn't move. Not because it was scary, but because DF was able to so vividly, and with such clarity, express in a coherent fashion the kinds of random things I see in my head every day. Have a look:



So, there it is. He actually has many other cartoons which are much better than this one, but that one, for whatever reason, resonates with me.

Enjoy your week. I'll post if I can. There's got to be some wide-open wireless somewhere down there.

It's, well...

Yeah... It's been cold here. I'm going on holiday this Saturday to (hopefully) sunny and warm Florida.

And the timing couldn't be better. I hate the cold in general. Those who know me, know that I don't use the word 'hate' casually.

I really am tired of the cold.

Predictions

... are extremely difficult to make -- especially about the future. You need a copy of tomorrow's newspaper to do that. Or something.

It's highly likely that I'm not the first one to think of this, but I predict that the Democratic Presidential ticket will feature Clinton and Obama. Or Obama and Clinton.

It would be foolish for either of them to not select the other as his or her running mate.

If you have those two on one ticket, I predict a landslide victory for the Democrats.

The corporate world

I sat in on three meetings today, which is a lot for a Friday. By the time the second one rolled around it occurred to me that I was bored. And really, I shouldn't have been. Our CEO was telling the engineering staff that we are doing a good job, and if we continue to do a good job, good things will be in store for us. Or something.

A snapshot from the meeting:

That's our CEO, far right. The guy second from left isn't sleeping.
His brain has just collapsed from the weight of words filling the air.

I don't have anything from the third meeting. An audio recording would've been better anyway, as one of the participants can't ever talk about what her team *can* do. It's always why things won't work.

Sound v1.0

I think sound is one of the most under-appreciated senses. I think most would point to to sight or even taste (thusly, smell) as more important.

Sound drives my life.

It's the dynamism of it. If you bite into a piece of steak (and to be sure, steak is by far, my favorite food), you have an idea of what you're going to get. Some are better than others, some multi-course meals can cost upwards of a thousand dollars. Or so I'm told. But for the most part, it's steak.

It would be hard for me to argue that sight is any less important, so I won't.

I mentioned in, I think, the first post, that I'm a gearhead. I believe I am that gearhead today because of how things sound. Sound is the basis for most of my memories -- some of them very early memories.

The sound of the starter motor of my dad's 1958 Chevrolet Corvette
The sound of the small-block 283's Carter four-barrel carburetor at full chat while riding in the Corvette
The sound of the gear-whine four-speed manual transmisson my dad's 1980 Datsun 310
The sound of my mom's 1982 Cadillac Seville Diesel -- Yeah, one of those
The sound of my first proper motorcycle, a 1971 Honda CL70K

That's the early stuff. More recently, In addition to all the crapola in the ether, sinking to depths you never thought possible, YouTube lets us see things that maybe we've only read about over the years.

The following items require that you have a sound card. Decent stereo speakers that you can play loudly are preferable. The video in some cases is poor, but the sound, well... Speaks for itself.

My penchant for mechanical sounds really runs the gamut:

A highly-modified Detroit Diesel 12v71TT in a Kenworth. That's a supercharged (sort of), twin-turbo V12 two-stroke diesel producing 2000 hp. Because it's a two-stroke, it actually sounds like it's turning twice the RPM it actually is.

The Cizeta V16T:




A Honda NR750 RC40:



A Honda CBR250RR:



A 2000hp Cummins V16 Diesel with four turbochargers at tickover:



There are more; lots more, but that gives a taste.

I can't say why these things drive me the way they do. In most ways, I wish they didn't.